There I was, minding my own business, when WHAM! I was damned to hell. Thankfully, my salvation is being actively prayed for, so maybe, just maybe, I still have a chance. OK, well, perhaps "minding my own business" is a bit of truth-stretch. I was actually stirring a pot, just…
I wrote a paper for one of my Master’s classes a couple of weeks ago, integrating what I’d absorbed from two textbooks into pages of my actual life. Shortly after I got it back from my professor, a friend and I were discussing this very blog, which led to a discussion of philosophizing in general. He lamented how lately, he’s seen an awfully lot of writing overwrought with words at the expense of actual ideas. This guy is an intellectual himself, a prolific writer and thinker, so his comment gave me pause.
As I’ve read for this particular graduate Communication class, I’ve worried more than once that some in my degree program seem to overstate the obvious. I love taking a fragment of seemingly mundane human interaction, analyzing its details and its place in our lives to parse from it a deeper understanding of our connectedness, yet I can’t shake the underlying fear that many would meet our research with a big, “So what?”
I thought I’d share some thoughts from this particular paper here, and ask for the feedback of the ‘blog’s readership. Based on responses I’ve received to previous pieces and the responses I’ve read here to the writing of others, I believe this audience falls toward the thinking end of the spectrum. There. I’ve laid out a blanket compliment. Be nice when you pick me apart, then, please??
Here goes:
Drama unfolds around us continually, though the mundane events of daily life often blur into methodical sameness …
I just found out about Conservapedia, an online service started to combat the educated, generally well-researched, illuminating, and therefore Left-wing, Liberal postings at Wikipedia. Read about what a Democrat really is, in a way that even Fox News wouldn't claim. Read about Evolution, which begins with the chapter "Lack of…
Former President George H.W. Bush, on his recent collapse from dehydration: Bush spoke about the incident that sent him to the hospital on Sunday, telling the audience that he became tired after playing golf in high temperatures. "The next thing I remember ... I fainted and I was on the…
A sorority at De Pauw University booted out a bunch of its pledges and it made the news. Here is the link to the story.
Before I continue, I wish to make my own sentiments perfectly clear. I detest the notion of fraternities and sororities. They are, to me, childish things which people belong to out of some desire to be special without having to rely on their own abilities–special by association. Pass the initiation, become accepted as a member, and you then can “borrow” the prestige of the group.
Or be tainted by it, as with, say, the John Birch Society or the KKK.
This is not to say I see no reason for many of these associations to exist–unions are a very loose form of such things, and I would argue that they serve a positive purpose, although they share the same capacity for abuse of the individual as any large organization, corporate, religious, or social. They are, to put it in as simple terms as I can, a necessary evil.
My prejudice in this regard stems from one of the more persistent myths underlying American culture–that of the coherent and independent individual. I say myth because it is patently untrue–likely an impossibility–and yet we struggle collectively toward instantiating the model through our laws, our national ethos, and our image of ourselves as individuals.
Which makes joing a fraternity or a sorority a particularly perplexing contradiction.
One joins such organizations for numerous reasons all of which center or …